Clarified Butter Review

Getting prepared is often a fun thing to do. Education, planning, making and buying preps is half, I’d argue that tasting, playing with, and testing out is the other half. That’s why we love this site and sharing our reviews with you. During our clarified butter review we were reminded of this, preparing can be a lot of fun.

Background

Also known as drawn butter in the United States, Clarified Butter is often served with unbreaded seafood in restaurants. Why the product isn’t used in more applications is a mystery to us. It is a good tasting option that has some very special properties that make it a great option for certain types of recipes and cooking techniques.

To make clarified butter or ghee (another popular name for it), butter is melted which separates into different layers due to density differences. Some solids raise to the top and are wiped off, others like the milk solids drop to the bottom and are removed as well. The resulting inner layer is then packaged as clarified butter.

Some of the unique benefits of clarified butter are:

High smoking point of 475 °F as opposed to 325 °F with normal butter. Perfect for sauteing foods

Much longer shelf life than fresh butter, in a can it should be able to get 10 years

Small amounts of lactose & casein mean it’s great for those with lactose intolerance or milk allergy

Taste

We have been using the clarified butter in home this past week. From cooking scrambled eggs in a pan to spreading it on toast we have used it in 14 different cases. Not once did our children make a comment about anything tasting different. We even went out of our way to ask how the toast was with the butter that was on it. They said “good”.

Julie, was the only one to notice a significant difference when eating it spread on foods. She isn’t a fan of it on toast but like the rest of us didn’t notice any difference when cooking with it.

Utility

Clarified butter has similar consistencies at different temperatures as normal butter. It will melt when left out in a warm room and will coagulate when placed in the refrigerator. At room temperature of 70 degrees in our home it is smooth to spread on toast.

The clarified butter shined when used with pan frying. Not sure if it is our cookware or oven stove top but we often burn butter, we’ve started buying PAM and other sprays as a result. No longer are those needed when using this drawn butter. In fact we never got it to burn. Maybe the high setting on our oven is just incapable of reaching higher but we are pleased with having a no burn coating for when we are sauteing veggies or making stir fry, we aren’t the biggest fans of vegetable or olive oils.

Shelf Life

We have reached out to World Grocer, the makers of the canned clarified butter to get an official response with regards to shelf life. We have read anywhere from 10 to 20 years for companies that sell clarified butter but will update this post when we get an official response. Whether it is 5 or 10 or 20 years, that is significantly better than normal store butter and this taste 100% better than butter powder products found from brands such as Provident Pantry and Saratoga Farms.

Pricing

At around $7-10 a can (16 ounces) clarified butter is surely a more expensive option pound for pound. Broken down to cost per ounce you are looking at spending around .43 to 59 cents an ounce as opposed to .19 cents an ounce for the butter at your local store (what we paid this week for more butter from Walmart). According to the manufacturer they claim you can reduce the amount you use by 2/3 when cooking with clarified butter (making it the better value) but we didn’t see that in our use. We use it pretty much on par with regular butter for the things we baked and cooked.

So is the more expensive price make it not worth buying? Absolutely not. We will continue using it in everyday cooking but only when we are sauteing foods or scrambling eggs. For a long term storage options we surely will buy a case and store away for a rainy day.

Other Interesting Details

No trans fat

Lactose free

100% natural

Check out clarified butter at the lowest price we have been able to find it. That concludes out clarified butter review!

Smoking Point Comparison – Regular Butter vs Clarified Butter

Picture Gallery

Back label of World Grocer Clarified ButterMelted Clarified Butter in a jarBack of label Clarified Butter NutritionSeparating layers, making clarified butter